As an example of this type of piezoelectric device, WO 2012/132661 discloses a piezoelectric device that is a fired body including a body part 100 and an external electrode 200 as illustrated in FIG. 22. In the piezoelectric device illustrated in FIG. 22, the body part 100 is a stack of alternating piezoelectric layers 110 and internal electrodes 120. The external electrode 200 includes a pair of surface electrodes 210 covering parts of an upper surface of the body part 100, and a pair of side electrodes 220 covering at least parts of respective side surfaces of the body part 100 and being connected to the internal electrodes 120 and the surface electrodes 210 at respective sides.
This type of piezoelectric device has actively been developed as an element (e.g., an autofocus for cameras and an ultrasonic motor for zooming) for controlling the position of an optical lens, an element (e.g., an actuator for magnetic heads of hard disk drives) for controlling the position of an element for reading and/or writing magnetic information and the like, and a sensor for converting mechanical vibration into electrical signals, for example.